Emotion regulation, teaching beliefs and child–teacher relationships from the perspectives of pre-school teachers

Abstract

The way how pre-school teachers perceive their relationships they formed with their students, teaching beliefs regarding the profession and teachers’ competencies to regulate their emotions are effective issues in order to enhance teacher–child relationships. The participants of this research were 94 Turkish pre-school teachers and 282 children, 142 of whom were boys and 140 of whom were girls. It has been found out the cognitive reappraisal strategy used by teachers for emotion regulation increased with positive relationship perception of teachers. A positive relationship was revealed between the scores of sensitivity and verbal participation and level of closeness perceived within the child–teacher relationship. Moreover, there were meaningful and positive relationships between the level of sensitivity and suppression of the expression and cognitive reappraisal strategies considering emotion regulation. It has been understood that teachers perceived the relationships with girls closer though, when it comes to boys, the perception of conflict was prominently much higher.